Chocolate ice cream splattered all over my white pants, and all over his new overalls. It was a fail.
He started crying. His emotions were all over the place, because he’s two and everything is the best thing ever or the end of the world at that age. I thought, ‘I should pick him up and take him out of here, he’s causing a scene.’ Instead I decided to give him a few moments, to feel everything he was feeling. I didn’t want him to think it wasn’t okay to get angry. I tried to explain that I was trying to help him. But he quickly moved away from me, to the other side of the bench.
I felt the tears creeping up into my eyes.
This was our first “anti-mommy” moment. He’s never not wanted me.
Suddenly a bright pink ball hits the side of the bench. It captures Evans attention, tears still streaming down his face. Until he sees the owner of the ball. A little blonde haired brown eyed girl, she couldn’t be any older than 6. She stopped to pick up the ball, said a quick hello to me and then looked at Evan and said “Are you okay?” he looked at me and nodded gently in her direction. The little girl looked back at me, and quickly said “Can he play ball with me?”
I looked to Evan, who didn’t wait for my response, he jumped up as fast as his two year old body would allow him to do and walked 3 feet in front of me, to the neatly trimmed green grass and played pass with this little girl.
He giggled uncontrollably every time the little girl pretended she couldn’t catch his passes. He smiled each time she told him “great pass.” And I will never forget the look in his eyes, when I announced that it was time for us to go and the little girl, Madison, gave him a kiss on the cheek and said she would see him later.
Later that night after his bath, and his teeth had been brushed, I was tucking Evan into bed. I handed him his overly used “Sammy”, his blanket that he has had since the day he was born. Evan refused the prized possession, telling me that he was a “big boy.” and no longer needed baby things.
I sat down on the floor beside him and asked him why he thought he no longer needed the blanket even if he was a big boy. He told me “because I is going to marry Madison and Sammy can’t come with us.”
Then he asked me if he could see her again tomorrow. When I told him that we would try, he smiled and fell asleep.
He asked me this every night for two weeks. We went to the park, Madison was not there, and every night he refused his Sammy. Finally, much to my relief a week later he cried that he loved Madison and missed her. 2 days later her name was never mentioned again and Sammy was back to being his sleeping companion. He was able to just forget her, at two you can do that. You can forget heartache and the things you love. If only we adults were able to do the same, it would solve so many problems.
It was my son’s first heartache, he had no idea what love like that meant. To love someone so much you would be willing to give up everything you just to be with that person. Mom read between each and every line I had in that story, and she still posted it for everyone that knew about the site to read. There were only a handful of people who would know to think more of it. I just held hope that the one person would understand most, wasn’t reading it.
Chapter nineteen
I made a really wonderful friend in Leonia. She was the sweetest woman. She and I would take Evan to the park, the movies, play dates and talk like old friends. She became my rock, until I could get back to town and see Stacy.
Stacy and I weren’t talking all that often. Mom and I were back to talking every single night, and every phone call she would tell me the same thing “She hasn’t come around.”
It wasn’t like Stacy. Stacy loved my mom, like my mom loved Stacy, but the fact was, it wasn’t just my mom who hadn’t seen her. No one in town was really seeing her. We played constant phone tag. The promised Skype sessions never happened. I took to emailing her instead. Sending her picture after picture of Evan eating, or smiling or sleeping. She always replied to those. Told me she loved me. Told me she loved Evan, told me to be happy.
But I wanted her to be happy too, and she wasn’t. So I tried to send her packages in the mail. They always came back unopened.
I tried to ignore the bad feeling I had.
Life for me picked up a bit. The magazine was doing amazing. Maureen decided that I worked better from home, so she allowed me to come to the office twice a week to meet with the editors and decide where my article was going. Most of the meetings didn’t have much to do with me, but as one of the writers, I was loving my job, and all of the people I was working with.
I met a man not long after starting at Bel Bambino. A doctor I met in the emergency room, when Evan fell down from the monkey bars one day at the park. His name was Heath Daniels. He was really pretty hot, sweet as could be, and a single dad as well. Although his daughter, Adelaide, Addy for short, lived with her mother, he was able to have her every other weekend.
The first time he asked me out, I said no. But then he asked me out every day for a month, each time with a smile and the same hopeless optimism that made me finally say yes. He seemed like a great guy, and I’d been moping around over Tyler for so long that I decided I should give someone else a chance.
Leonia gladly agreed to stay with Evan for the evening.
We went to a nice restaurant and then to the movies. I hadn’t been to the movies since before I had Evan.
Heath was funny, and sweet. He opened doors for me. He paid for everything. He told me how beautiful I looked. He complemented me on my articles. Told me about his divorce and his ex-wife. College sweethearts that just grew apart. He admired her as a mother, and even got along with her new husband.
He was amazing.
We started dating once a week. Then several times a week, and then he met Evan again in a less formal setting (the first time was an injured screaming Evan with a scraped knee). Evan fell in love with him from the first time they hung out and played trucks on the floor.
When Evan met Heaths daughter Adelaide, he thought she was the best kid ever. Addy was 5 to Evans almost 3. They became inseparable
Evan and Addy would have slumber parties. Then one night I invited Heath to spend the night as well. We didn’t have sex right off. I was scared to take that step, and Heath never pressured me, but it was nice to feel a man’s arms wrapped around me while I slept. It was comforting. I was far too used to sleeping in the darkness alone, trapped with my own “What if’s?”
Spending time with him made me happy, it made Evan and Addy happy. It made Heath happy.
Falling in love wasn’t something I planned on. But I totally fell in love with Heath, but in the back of my mind I always felt this tiny reminder. This pang in my heart that said “this isn’t yours to give away to him.” I pushed it down and ignored it. I told my heart to shut up, because this is what moving on was like. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was going to work.
I told Heath everything about Tyler. He became angry. Not at me, but at Tyler.
“He has no idea what he is missing out on.” He would say.
And he is right when he says that. Tyler has no idea what an amazing, smart and beautiful boy Evan really is.
The pain of Tyler’s actions slowly started to dissipate. Over time, it became less painful to know that there was a man out there who chose to not be a part of his little boy’s life. Heath filled a void in my heart, in my life and I loved him for it. I loved him for accepting the past that is Tyler, and I loved him for wanting so badly to be our future.
6 months later, I found out that Jessica had a little girl. Okay, I didn’t find out. Matt told me he saw it on her MyFace. Apparently he kept tabs on her, and her relationship status. ‘Married.’
Two months later, Heath asked me to marry him.
I said yes.
I. Said. Yes.
Part two
Chapter twenty- Past. Tyler
For the first time in days, I climb into my dirt hole bed and passed out. My automatic weapon in my hands. Waterproof gear, keeping my fil
thy uniform dry. The heat was intense during the day here, but the nights were always cold, or wet. I found myself always fighting colds. The medics tried to pump us with vitamin C and Zinc, but we were on the front lines. Sometimes we would go hours without fresh water, vitamins were to keep us healthy and fighting but the fighting, the sickness. It was nothing compared to what we faced that night.
We had been on land for about 2 weeks. Patrolling the area against the enemy. Yes, I was in the Navy. But in the Navy you don’t spend your entire deployment on a ship, that’s only part of it. We do have missions on land as well.
I had seen things I would never be able to un-see. Pregnant women flogged in public areas for showing their faces. Children shot for stealing loaves of bread. We tried to keep everyone fed. We offered portions of our rations, but that too caused lethal repercussions. Here we are the enemy. No matter how many lives we are trying to save. No matter how much money or food we offer, the weapons we provide to the governments here trying to overcome the true enemies –we are always viewed as intruders.
The air always smelled of gun powder and death. Burning bodies, burning homes. War. It was something that I didn’t truly experience in my first two years. Those two years were spent mostly on board the ship, or docked in beautiful safe countries. Here. Here we see it all. We see things that no human being should ever see.
Josh is off in the bushes throwing up again. He’s sick. Some bacterial infection. I am worried about him. The medics can’t do anything, unless he becomes unable to fight. We don’t get sick days. We work until we are hurt in action or killed. No one cares if a man has a fever.
I lay still on the cold ground, mostly silence enveloping me. Thinking about Josh, the man who has become my best friend. Thinking about the woman he now shares a child with, a woman I am legally married to. All because of her crazy lies. Our worlds were torn upside down by Jessica. My heart begins to race, I can’t believe I trusted her, I thought she was my friend. I’m remembering the days after I married her, in a small courthouse with just Josh as a witness:
Hardly a witness, he was drunk and understandably annoyed with my “bride to be.” He had begged her to throw caution to the wind, to marry him anyway. Their child would be born on U.S soil, and Josh just knew that he could find a way to keep her in the States. But Jessica insisted it wouldn’t work that way, couldn’t work that way.
It wasn’t until we got a call from our lieutenant, wanting to know where we were, calling us into his office immediately. When we entered, several men, varying in rank stood with solemn looks on their faces.
Lieutenant Johns, spoke first. He told us the whole story. Michael Winters, Jessica’s father was an important man in the French Government, apparently Jessica had been sent to the U.S. not to care for a sick aunt, but under very, very different circumstances.
Her whole story, she made everything up. The worst part of it was never discovered until later.
I had married her when she was only a few weeks pregnant. We knew that something wasn’t right. She became angry and mean towards Josh. She started pushing the fear that her father would kill her if he found out she was pregnant by a man he wouldn’t agree with. So we rushed and got married. I tried to back out, I spoke of Alyssa, and how much I missed her, wanted her, which made Jessica freak out. Something felt off but I chalked it up to fear of her father, I refused to kiss her. I felt like I was betraying my own soul. When she first proposed the marriage idea, I thought it would be for a brief few months until she could get a Visa. But after seeing Alyssa again, I no longer wanted to do it.
I knew I was saving Jessica’s life, but at the risk of ruining my own. She had it all planned out. She said we would remain married until she gave birth and then she would annul the marriage so that she could marry Josh. By then her parents would have been fooled and move on. Not question anything. The details as to how and why this would work were never really shared. I just thought Josh knew and I was helping this couple start their family, free of her family in France.
And then I received a letter in the mail from her parents. Saying that they had received our marriage license from the French Government. It turns out, Jessica’s father had asked for any legal information on his daughter. She had been missing for over a year. She was mentally unstable, schizophrenic, and a very skilled manipulator. She was supposed to be in the United States to receive better mental health care, secret mental care. Her aunt was not frail and on her death bed, her aunt was supposed to be overseeing Jessica’s care. At least she hadn’t been sick at first. Her aunt’s body was discovered 3 days after Jessica and I married at City Hall, just outside of our base. The day that I received the letter.
Legally, at that moment there was nothing I could do. Of course we were deploying for an entire year, the day after Jessica and I were married. Meaning she would be living in an apartment off base. We were not married in time to qualify her for family house and I honestly didn’t want her to build a home for me. I wasn’t in love with her, I was doing this for Josh, and it was temporary, or so I thought. I was doing this to be a good person, to help my friends. I was doing this because the girl I wanted didn’t want me.
With everything that Jessica’s father told us, it was clear she had murdered her aunt. Slowly but surely. She had been poisoning her with rat poison. Just a little bit here and there. Her aunt became so ill, but never needed to be hospitalized because of the small amounts Jessica was using. She thought it was a flu, or a stomach bug that would pass. Over time, her aunt began to lose memories, why Jessica was there. Her aunt’s job was to make sure Jessica was taking her medications, that she was seeking therapy, and that she didn’t enter into any relationships.
Jessica had always been promiscuous. It was something her father struggled with. At 16, she had a baby and never told anyone. She left the baby in the bathroom at home and went out with her boyfriend hours later. Her mother found the infant and her parents now raise the child as their own. Jessica had a psychotic break, and never even remembered giving birth. Several years later, she was doing things that didn’t make sense. Buying cars and then leaving them in parking lots, maxing out stolen credit cards and giving the goods to strangers on the street, because the voices told her too. Her parents, believing they were helping her, always covered for her. Carefully making sure she never went to prison by paying off police, victims of her scams, and her doctors.
When she started to believe that the government her father worked for wanted her dead, her father knew that they needed to get her help. However with his position in the French Government, he had to be careful that no scandal would affect his job. So Jessica’s parents decided to send Jessica to Hawaii with her aunt Bethany. There she would receive excellent medical services, proper medication and be able to return back home and back to a life in the spotlight.
Clearly something went wrong. By the time Josh and I received all of this information, it was too late for us to do anything. We were already deployed, helpless but hoping that someone would step in and make sure that she didn’t harm her child, Josh’s daughter.
Her father stated that he would not be in a position to take the child in, his wife was in the public eye for ovarian cancer and had raised public awareness by agreeing to a lifesaving hysterectomy. Unlike Jessica’s previous child, she wasn’t able to pretend to have hidden, and given birth to the small girl. This time, unless he was willing to risk his career, he would be unable to accept the child, the scandal would be too much.
Josh instead stepped up and said he would take his child. That wasn’t much of a question, but the issue was, what to do in the meantime. He was going half way across the globe, scandal or not, his position with the Navy didn’t allow for leave for such circumstances. How was he going to make sure that his child was okay, how would he know that she wouldn’t do something crazy.
Turns out, Child Protective Services had plans of taking the child, but then I called my mom and asked her to help out. She was willing to fly down and ta
ke the baby. Josh didn’t have any family, his mom passed away when he was a child, his father dying a few short years later. No brothers, no sisters, no long lost cousins. He was a lot like me, pretty much on his own.
So Mom came out, then returned back home with the little girl. Josh was able to place a satellite call to my mom, who waited at the hospital, taking nearly 2 weeks off from her nursing job to make sure she was able to get the baby home and all set up. He named the baby Jaylynn.
I knew my mom was one of a kind growing up. She didn’t always make the best choices, and she didn’t choose to be a single mom, what girl did? But she rose above everything, she worked hard, and now she was taking temporary legal custody of a baby to help one of my best friends. She was amazing in every sense of the word, the second woman I loved most in life.
I shake myself from the pleasant thoughts of my mom. The sound of popping brings me back to reality. I grab my automatic rifle and peek over the top of the piled dirt lining the rim of the dugout sleeping hole. The rain has gone from a light drizzle to steady pour. It’s hard to make anything out more than a few feet before me.
I hear faint yelling. Screams. I know they are coming from the camp a quarter mile out that we created for women and children who were part of our protection assignment.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
The sounds of powerful fast shooting guns, but I know right away those sounds are not our guns. None of our men would start shooting without a signal to the rest of us that there was danger.
I run towards the sound, weapon drawn, ready for what I may find ahead.
Spots of blood trail in the direction of the camp. I run towards Lieutenant John’s hole. He’s dead.
I find three other men in my platoon shot and left in random areas.
Wait for Me Page 7